Things went as scheduled. Fedora 9, code-named "Sulphur" has just been released. Fedora 9 promises some significant improvements over its "Werewolf" predecessor. Though this is a major release version of this Red Hat-sponsored distribution, the excitement is less compared to the flight of the "Heron". But should we care about this so-called publicity more than anything?

Though I didn't notice a lot of sites and blogs that displayed a release countdown image, I didn't care because I'm still pretty much excited about Fedora 9. Counting on some rave reviews of Fedora 9 "Preview" HERE and HERE, I expect this new version to be the best release ever. To really know why I'm so thrilled about it, here is a list of new features that are included in Fedora 9:

*This release features GNOME 2.22. GNOME now includes a webcam photo and video creation utility called Cheese, improved network filesystem support, a new international clock applet, Google Calendar support and custom email labels in Evolution, a new Remote Desktop Viewer, improved accessibility features, and PolicyKit integration.

*KDE 4.0.3 is available in the KDE Live image as well as the regular DVD.

*Xfce 4.4.2 is available as part of this release.

*NetworkManager 0.7 provides improved mobile broadband support, including GSM and CDMA devices, and now supports multiple devices and ad-hoc networking for sharing connections. It is now enabled by default on installations from DVD, CD, the network, and Live images.

*The Fedora installer, Anaconda, now supports partition resizing for ext2/3, NTFS filesystems, creating and installing to encrypted file systems, improved Rescue Mode with FirstAidKit, independent locations for the second stage installer and the software packages. A redesigned, larger netboot.iso image now features a second stage installer partly for this reason.

*Live USB images now support persistence, so your data and setting changes will be preserved even after rebooting.

*PackageKit, a new set of graphical and console tools, with a framework for cross-distribution software management, has replaced Pirut in this release of Fedora. The PackageKit graphical updater is available instead of Pup. Behind PackageKit, the performance of yum has been significantly improved.

*FreeIPA makes managing auditing, identity and policy processes easier by providing web-based and command line provisioning, and administration tools to ease system administration. FreeIPA combines the power of the Fedora Directory Server with FreeRADIUS, MIT Kerberos, NTP and DNS to provide an easy, out of the box solution.

*Ext4, the next version of the mature and stable ext3 filesystem is available as a option in this release. Ext4 features better performance, higher storage capacity and several other new features.

*This release of Fedora uses Upstart, an event-based replacement for the /sbin/init daemon.

*Firefox 3 brings a number of major improvements including a native look and feel, desktop integration, the new Places replacement for bookmarks, and a re-worked address bar.

*The completely free and open source Java environment OpenJDK 6 is installed by default. IcedTea 7, derived from OpenJDK 1.7, is no longer the default. IcedTea includes a browser plug-in based on GCJ, and is available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. GCJ is still the default on PPC architecture.

*OpenOffice.org 2.4, with many new features, is available as part of Fedora 9.

*Fedora now includes Perl 5.10.0, which features a smaller memory footprint and other improvements.

*Fedora now includes TeXLive to replace the older, unmaintained TeX distribution.

*Fedora 9 features a 2.6.25 based kernel.

*Kernel crashes can be more automatically reported to http://www.kerneloops.org/ and diagnosed in a friendly way via the kerneloops package installed by default. Crash signatures are commonly referred to as oopses in Linux.

*Work on the start-up and shutdown in X has yielded noticeable improvements.

See release notes HERE for the complete list of features and important announcements.

Plenty of hardcore Linux enthusiasts are probably on standby right now and are waiting for their download to finish. By the way, you can get Fedora 9 from HERE. At the moment, I'm downloading Fedora-9-i686-Live.iso. I will see you all later for updates.